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ecomes a symbol. These range from uncanny bedtime stories to notions of monsters coming after one in the
dark, to the dangers of somnambulism as well as the production of horror films themselves out of nightmare
contents, respectively as an alternative to the latter.
‘1, 2, Freddy’s coming for you’: A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
A Nightmare on Elm Street (hereafter: Nightmare 1) is about a group of teenagers surrounding the main
character Nancy (Heather Langenkamp) who are terrorized and slaughtered in their nightmares, by a killer
later identified as Fred Krueger. Krueger, a paedophile child molester and murderer, has been torched alive by
a mob of enraged parents living on Elm Street 11 . Apparently, he managed to somehow live on in their children’s
nightmares where he continues to terrorize them, also killing them in real life if he manages to do so in the
teenagers’ nightmares. Nancy, who figures as the Final Girl 12 , becomes aware of Krueger’s past life as well as of
his present dream world-existence and eventually manages to bring him out of her dream into the real world
where she first fights him with booby traps she has installed around the house, and then sets him on fire (once
again). However, the picture’s open ending leaves it unclear whether Freddy is actually defeated or not, or if
Nancy falls victim to him (or perhaps to madness), by presenting another dream sequence featuring Krueger’s
return in the very end, after his supposed elimination by Nancy.
The very beginning of Nightmare 1 is a sequence which is later revealed as a dream: After being chased by
Freddy through his characteristic boiler room (or rather hall), we see Tina (Amanda Wyss) wake up in her bed,
sweaty and scared, behind her a shadow reminiscing the Gothic horror of German expressionism, which will be
referenced again in New Nightmare, when Freddy’s razor-blade glove casts a long-fingered shadow similar to
Graf Orlok’s in Nosferatu, a Symphony of Horror . 13 Tina’s mother enters to check on her daughter but fails to be
of any assistance, instead pointing out that Tina’s nightdress displays four slits across the stomach. However,
Tina’s mother instructs her to ‘either cut your fingernails or [...] stop that kind o’dreaming’ (00:04),
immediately finding a rational explanation for the slit nightdress, namely her daughter clawing herself in her
sleep. After her mother leaves, we see Tina somewhat superstitiously grabbing the crucifix from the wall and
lying down again. She thus follows the advice given in a verse from the nursery rhyme accompanying Freddy
Krueger: ‘5, 6, grab your crucifix,’ which we subsequently hear when Tina’s bedroom cross-fades into the
characteristic white-clad girls skipping rope.
The second attack on Tina also occurs in a bed, but this time she and her boyfriend Rod sleep in her mother’s
bedroom when she is out of the house overnight. After having had intercourse and fallen asleep, the girl awakes
from the sound of pebbles being tossed against the bedroom window, and gets up to look out. In the following
sequence, she goes out into the garden and onto the street where she finally meets Krueger. Chased by him, she
makes her way back to the house, and the two of them crash on a garden table when he attacks her right before
she can enter the house. Then suddenly, we see Tina wrestling with her bed sheets from her bed that serve as
mediators between this scene (which is only revealed as Tina’s dream when Freddy appears) and reality. As we
now see Rod waking up in the bed next to her, Tina screams and kicks in her sleep, struggling with Krueger
under the sheets, who is visible only in Tina’s nightmare but invisible to Rod when he jumps out of the bed and
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